(Image Source: Business Insider )   BY DAN KENNEDY   ANCHOR JASMINE BAILEY   NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his crew have been freed after five days in captivity in Syria. Good Morning America recounts his ordeal. “He and his crew were grabbed while crossing into Northwest Syria last Thursday. There had been no communication with him. No contact. No ransom demands.” CNN reports the journalist’s captors were driving the three men around in the back of a van when they found a chance to escape. “They seemed to have come across a group of Syrian rebels... who at this point entered into a gunfight with their captors causing an unknown number of them to escape, two of the captors to be killed and then the NBC team to be freed.” Engel, his producer and his cameraman spoke to NBC’s “Today” Tuesday morning from Turkey. He explains how they kept their spirits up. “We passed messages to each other, we joked around, we weren’t allowed to speak. But if you peek underneath the blindfolds you can see if there’s a guard in the room or not. We tried to joke a little bit back and forth.” The 39-year-old journalist said he believes his captors were members of the Shabiha -- a group that acts as the unofficial police force of the Assad regime. The New York Times reports NBC tried to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days. Its competitors and other major news organizations didn’t report the alleged kidnapping our of fear it would further endanger the crew. Engel and his crew were unharmed in the incident.